The home library . om is sure to be many degrees hotterthan the lower, and heat, especially the dry heat of gasand hot-air furnaces, is very injurious to books, decayingand cracking the bindings and bringing rapidly to lightany hidden defects in the paper. As a fact, to have thetopmost shelf in easy reach is the extreme limit to whichthe height of a book-case ought to be allowed to rise. Theold-fashioned library, public and private alike, with itsGothic architecture, its vaulted ceiling, its lofty alcoves,and its circling gallery, piled high with books rising tieron tier, is wholly unscientifi
The home library . om is sure to be many degrees hotterthan the lower, and heat, especially the dry heat of gasand hot-air furnaces, is very injurious to books, decayingand cracking the bindings and bringing rapidly to lightany hidden defects in the paper. As a fact, to have thetopmost shelf in easy reach is the extreme limit to whichthe height of a book-case ought to be allowed to rise. Theold-fashioned library, public and private alike, with itsGothic architecture, its vaulted ceiling, its lofty alcoves,and its circling gallery, piled high with books rising tieron tier, is wholly unscientific, in that the books are as 01^ THE LIBRARY AND ITS FURNITURE, 61 hard of access to man as they are easy to moth and upper galleries of a high-arched library are almost ashot as the upper galleries of a theatre. Books are not thebetter for being baked, any more than is man. The mass-ive pile of buildings, with a great dome towering over all,no longer meets with the approval of the expert in Fig. 12. The tall book-case, like the tall house, is only tolera-ble when needs must. Where the accommodation is spa-cious, low cases are incomparably more convenient, more 62 THE HOME LIBRARY, comely, and in every way more satisfactory. In a largeroom like a picture gallery, low book-cases (Fig. 12) in arow, rising only waist-high, afford standing room on theirtops for abundant bric-a-hrac, under and in front of thelines of hanging frames. An irregularity in the height ispleasing to the eye ; and the higher cases might be cup-boards with wooden doors to conceal unbound engravingsand photographs, while the intervening cases, somewhatlower, have their open shelves crowded with books on artand artists. Save for decorative effect, curtains before open book-shelves are useless. Nor are they of any greater utilitywhen put behind glass doors, unless that particular book-case happens to contain a litter of pamphlets or other ortsand ends which it is well to hide from the p
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookd, booksubjectprivatelibraries, bookyear1883
